Family in the City

August 09, 2009

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Job 42:10-17; Colossians 3:12-17; Mark 3:31-35
The Reverend Cathy S. Gilliard

Listen to part one of this sermon

Listen to part two of this sermon

Some of you know that I am a product of a pretty large family: eight children in all; six still living. My parents were married 61 years before my father passed away four years ago. I suppose as far as families go, we are a pretty close bunch, which is a miracle in itself given that all of us are pretty high strung. Let’s just face it, we are a high strung, over-achieving family of Chiefs; being an Indian really doesn’t work well in our midst. Most of our childhood days were filled with obvious and clear love for each other. On other days, we fought like cats and dogs and made up stories about one another. We bickered and pouted and talked about one another. But we also learned how to make up; to forgive and forget. We worked through family business and we still do. There were times when we seemed to have a lot materially and other times when it was clear that we had little; almost nothing at all. However, there was always that sense of connectedness that held us together and anchored us. And no matter what, I know that we will always stick it out, because deep down, each of us knows that the worst possible thing is that we stop loving each other. At the end of the day, looking back, it was a pretty good way to start off my life. My parents certainly did not have a textbook understanding about parenting and the dynamics of family life. But I have concluded that they did the best they could; a pretty good job after all. They taught us to work hard, love God, do the right thing, for which I am eternally grateful and feel blessed beyond measure. My own two sons will have to give you their commentary on the family life they remember. But I think it’s only fair that we wait a few years until they have survived the rearing of their own children. My guess is that their perspective might change a bit.

At its best, family life is where we begin to understand what God’s love is like. During those early formative years we learn that love is without condition. We learn how to feel safe and secure knowing that our best interest is always in the forefront – to be claimed and held close regardless. We learn that disappointments and failures are part of the experience and perfection is not a mandate. We learn that we need other people; we cannot and do not walk alone. We learn that two heads are better than one; that we can accomplish more together than we can apart. That the world is bigger than our own self; like brothers and sisters, we learn how to belong to one family. [1] And so, the images of God as mother and father; Jesus as brother are not burdensome but life-giving and liberating.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that "When families work right, they are God’s way of teaching us important things, like how to share and how to work together and how to take care of one another. A healthy family has a way of smoothing out rough edges by making us rub up against each other, like tumbling pebbles in a jar. Living with other people, we learn that we cannot have everything our own way. We learn to compromise, giving up some of the things we want so that other people can have some of the things they want, and while it is never easy learning this give and take is part of learning how to be fully human.” [2]

But we humans are frail and we don’t always get it right. As a matter of fact, I think we are so much a work in progress that we rarely get it right. Things happen. Sometimes, unraveling the scars of a bad childhood can be almost be unbearable. As children we have no say or control over the families into which we are born or the families we end up with. If we had to do the picking perhaps some of us may not have chosen our siblings or even our parents.

But as adults we get to participate. We get to create or form the family we desire. And even then, sometimes things don’t always work out as we had hoped or planned. But in the church we have the opportunity to create something new - a new dynamic that allows us to be free from the shackles of the past and understand that we have a new connection not by human blood but through the blood of Jesus Christ, who binds us together with all people everywhere. In the church we begin to hear a different voice. The voice of God calling us His beloved Son, Daughter.

This is the truth of who we really are. Long before our parents, teachers, spouses, children and friends loved us or wounded us, the voice of God was calling us his own. And this is God’s word to us: “I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother’s womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own and I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover and your spouse…yes, even your child…wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one. [3]

At the heart of it, is a question of identity. To whom and where do we belong? This is the question presented in our gospel lesson this morning. Jesus has been going about his ministry work of teaching, preaching, and healing the sick. He has entered his hometown and large crowds have gathered so much so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they also went, Mark says, to restrain him because the crowd, and I suspect, some of his own kin were saying that he was out of his mind. A little bit crazy – full of demons and such.

Someone out of the crowd and said “your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” To which Jesus replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus scandalizes us here because he dares to step outside the conventional circle of blood relation and preference. He dares to subvert the ways in which we settle into identities that can only take us so far. Not only does he re-identify fisherman and tax collectors, but he dares to re-identify his mother as “the crowd” and the crowd as his mother. Jesus ushers in a new order of what it means to be kin, family, community. Those who are willing to do the will of God – they are my mother, my sisters, my brothers. And, my friends, more than anything else, what is the will of God? It can all be summed up as this: love God. Love neighbor.

I think it’s real important in a city like New York to get this. Because so many of us are geographically separated from our close family. And I suspect that some of us have moved here in order to escape some of them. In this city, we cannot take friendship or relationships for granted. If they are going to be healthy and life-giving all parties have to work at it. In our shared life as the church we strive to love one another as Christ has taught us. In covenant groups and study groups, work trips, retreats, and shared experiences, we form circles of friendships that are far more sisterly and brotherly than we have ever known.

Paul tells us in Colossians “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.” [4]

I think my first real awakening about this was with Janet Evans and Veronica Balc. Some of you remember them. They both passed on within months of each other about two years ago. They wereso quiet among us that you might have missed them. As a young woman Veronica left Romania and walked across Europe with her husband to escape the communist regime. She landed in America and went on to become a professional singer and had a career and led a life of learning and adventure – meeting people and loving them however she could.

Janet was born with rheumatoid arthritis and was orphaned at age 11. A physically challenged woman of mixed race, she went on to educate herself and served the church as a missionary in Peru for 35 years. Each of these women claimed this church as their home and family. They understood the impact of that statement in ways that I had to learn.

These women lived into their eighties. No husband. No children. Any remaining relatives lived some distance away. Each had lived as a "stranger in a country foreign to them.” Though they had worked hard, in their latter years they would have been consider poor by some standards. Society would have marginalized them because they were old, weak, vulnerable, and alone.

But in the church they were not the "least" at all. They were the greatest among us. Worthy of our deep love and care.

One of the great hymns of the church reminds us: Blest be the tie that bind our hearts in Christian love; the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above. We share each other’s woes, our mutual burdens bear; and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear. When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain; but we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again. [5]
_____________
[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2004, p. 84.
[2] Ibid., p. 84
[3] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, Crossroad, New York, 1996, p. 30.
[4] Colossians 3:12-17.
[5] Blest Be the Tie that Binds, The United Methodist Hymnal, #557.

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